Jill the Ripper
by GIRL IN STORY
Summary: London never got any closure on the Jack the Ripper case, although how much they could have gotten remained in questions when public hangings had been outlawed in '68. Crowley considered it something of a shame. The British Empire had a reputation to maintain as the progenitor of the spectator sport.


"Romanticization of misogyny is what it is," Crowley muttered, gesturing at the screen. A docudrama about Jack the Ripper was on the BBC.

"I agree, of course," said Aziraphale, "but the killer would not have become so famous if he didn't strike at that particular point in history. It was a period of fascinating social reform."

"You don't have to tell me."

"Well, then what's the bloody problem?" asked the angel. After the Armagedidn't, Aziraphale stopped saying, "Good Lord," and subsequently began swearing like a sailor out of semantic necessity.

It never failed to make Crowley smile. "Nothing."

"Nothing my holy arse," said Aziraphale, and Crowley nearly _giggled_. They were on their third bottle of wine, but that was no excuse. He did have a reputation to maintain. "You've been grumbling ever since you turned on the telly."

"I was there," Crowley said, surprising even himself.

"Oh?" That seemed to peak Aziraphale's interest. "I didn't see you for much of the fin de siècle, come to think of it."

"That's because you spent most of it swooning about with Oscar Wilde."

"Well, the poor dear needed a friend. That Bosie was a terrible influence. So what were you doing in Whitechapel?"

Crowley let out an unnecessary breath of relief. Of course, they knew each other better than that, but it would never cease to be a source of amazement that an angel had faith in a demon.

All the same, he _treasured _the look of surprise on Aziraphale's face when he said, "I was Jack the Ripper."

"Pull the other wing," Aziraphale said, over Crowley's giggles.

"Well, I wasn't really, but I did give her a hand."

"Her?"

Crowley nodded thoughtfully. On the TV, there was a crosshatched, Gorey-esque drawing of a man in a tall hat. Crowley had worn one such hat for the better part of the century. He looked more like Jack the Ripper than Gillian ever had.

"_You gotta' make it look more evil," said Crowley. They were sitting in the garden, enjoying the bad weather, because they weren't bloody foreigners. "Write in big letters. That looks more like a man."_

"_I thought the intention was to appear more evil?" asked Gillian. _

"_There's a difference?"_

_Gillian added a postscript with somewhat larger lettering. She blotted the the nib of her pen and waited for the ink to set. It was red. Crowley had wanted to use blood, but Gillian feared it might hide some clue to their identities. There was no scientific evidence to suggest such a thing, but there had to be a reason why some transfusions of the blood succeeded where others failed under similar conditions. _

_Fortunately, they hadn't much use for their red ink of late. The house had been doing quite well. The Season had not yet started, which meant fewer gentry slumming in East London, but it also meant they had more girls. When the Season began around Christmas, many of them would return to their more reputable work as seamstresses, sewing dresses for the balls and dinner parties. Gillian like to say that, in their line of work, ball season was year round. _

_She began to read aloud. "'I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can't use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Don't mind me giving the trade name. P.S. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. Ha ha.'"_

_There was a pause._

"_You wrote 'ha ha'?" asked Crowley. _

"_I know it looks odd on paper, but I wanted them to picture me laughing aloud."_

_He shrugged. "No, it's good. I like it. Why Jack though?"_

"_Because," said Gilliam. "I am a seamstress and a midwife, and now I am something else entirely. What was it you called me when we first met?"_

"_A Jack of all trades," said Crowley. _

London never got any closure on the Jack the Ripper case, although how much they could have gotten remained in questions when public hangings had been outlawed in '68. Crowley considered it something of a shame. The British Empire had a reputation to maintain as the progenitor of the spectator sport.

The city got something else instead. Jack the Ripper had done more for the East End than any of its social reformers. No one cared about the East End before that. Before Jack the Ripper began his work, no one cared that parents had to stay awake to make sure their babies weren't eaten by rats.

Oh, they had their pamphlets and their speeches. The Queen herself banned mutton from the royal table in solidarity of their plight. Crowley heard tell the ban lasted a whole fortnight.

Those who were actually moved to action made matters worse. They shut down doss houses, thinking it would solve the housing problem, and in its place creates a problem of homelessness.

They certainly didn't care that it was their refuse flowing down the Thames toward Whitechapel, or their smoke blowing east on the prevailing winds. They didn't care that their tariff laws took away the silk trade. They didn't care that the landlords of our most squalid rookeries lived comfortable on the West End.

Gillian wasn't a killer. There were those who called her such, because she was an abortionist. To the prostitutes of the East End, she was a hero even before she began her real work.

It was girls like Ada, Emma, Annie, and Martha who had inspired her. All unfortunates, all stabbed within the last year, none of the stabbers apprehended. Killing a prostitute was becoming as popular as electric lights, and nowhere near as dangerous. Soon it would be added to the London guidebooks.

Sex workers were often the victim of violent crimes, but they didn't receive any attention until Gillian began mutilating their corpses and sending poorly spelled letters to the papers.

_Gillian blew her whistle to signal Crowley, and he stopped the brougham. They really had to work out a signal that didn't wasn't generally used to attract the attention of the police. _

_Otherwise, they considered themselves quite well-prepared. They had taken a leaf out of the police's book and nailed bicycle tires to the soles of their boots to quiet the sound of the nails on cobbles. They had visited a manufacturer of Mackintosh raincoats and purchased rubberized fabric to line the back of the brougham, along with a raincoat of her own. _

_The carriage came to a stop at the juncture of Buck's Row and Whitechapel Road. Gillian almost looked forward to the day that Crowley purchased a mechanically powered vehicle, because at least they were subject to a speed limit of two miles per hour. _

_The law also stated that they must be accompanied by a man walking ahead with a red flag to direct pedestrian and equestrian traffic. The police had no way to measure a driver's speed, but with the way the Crowley drove, it would be quite apparent that he was going much faster than two miles per hour, and if anyone was waving a red flag it would simply be because they mistook him for a charging bull._

_The police patrolled Buck's Row regularly, but regularity could be a disadvantage. Prostitutes were indispensable when it came to committing a crime in London, because they knew the police beats better than the PCs did themselves. Thain and Kerby had passed by on their regular beats perhaps a quarter hour past. Crowley was certain they would finish before another PC turned down Buck's Row, but it didn't have to be a PC. A simple costermonger could be their undoing. Fortunately, the London docks had caught fire that night. People always came out for a good fire. _

_Gillian had been concerned that the fire would die out on the rain-soaked wood, until she was informed that the building in question was used to store brandy and gin. Crowley had bemoaned the loss. _

_People wondered how Jack did his work so fast. The prostitutes of East End were their eyes and ears. _

_Crowley joined her in the back of the brougham. _

"_What are you doing?"_

"_We want it to look like a killer of the same persuasion, but we must establish our own pattern. If we replicated Martha's killing, and the police caught her murderer, we wouldn't be able do this again."_

"_Right. So what are you doing?" _

"_Do you know the etymology of hysterectomy, Anthony?"_

"_I don't know what either of those are, so most likely not."_

"_It has the same root as hysteria and hysterical. In Latin, hystericus means, 'of the womb'."_

"_I see," said Crowley. He had learned his lesson about questioning Gillian on the subject of hysteria. Last time, an aborted fetus may have been flung. _

"_Oh, there's no time. The hysterectomy will have to wait until our second victim, but that's not necessarily an issue. Escalation can be part of a pattern."_

_Gillian wrapped Mary Ann in the rubberized fabric from neck to ankles. From a distance, or from about three feet in London's fog, it looked little different than her ulster. She then took one of Mary Ann arms and slung it over her shoulder. Crowley took the other without prompting. Two people supporting their drunken friend. That was as innocent as things got in Whitechapel._

"Bloody heck," said Aziraphale. "The quiet life isn't your cup of tea, is it?"

Crowley smiled. "Always been more of a whiskey drinker."

"Right."

Aziraphale was pretending to watch the documentary, but it would have been more convincing if he wasn't staring at the wall slightly to its left.

"Been thinking of trying tea," said Crowley. "All that whiskey can't be good for me. Getting to that age and all."

Aziraphale gave him a fond look. "You've been that age since 4004 BC."

Crowley shrugged. "Well, you know what I mean."

Aziraphale shifted a little on the couch until they were facing each other. "You've never mentioned any of this before. It's not for lack of interest. You've told far less interesting stories. Several times."

"We've known each other 6,000 years, angel. Of course I'm going to repeat myself a bit."

Aziraphale simply waited patiently.

"I dunno'." Crowley shrugged again. again. Even after 6,000 years, he still found shoulders a bit of a novelty. "Maybe it was the opposite. Too much to tell."

Besides, he did have a reputation to maintain.


End file.
